Guitar heroes, virtual and actual

The phenomenon of Guitar Hero is unaccountable to most musicians. Why would anyone spend hours miming moves with a fake instrument when given similar time investment you could make music yourself, live, and with friends? Nonetheless, the game is the Christmas season’s most highly anticipated music item. As for disappointing early sales reports for “World Tour,” its just-released new edition, aren’t sales down for everything, everywhere?

Mary Halvorson is the freshest, busiest, most critically acclaimed guitar-slinger out of downtown Manhattan/Brooklyn right now, a former student and current band member of Anthony Braxton’s at the hub of a circle of ultra-smart, almost 30-year-old players prodigiously contributing to each other’s projects. On Dragon’s Head, in transparent collaboration with upright bassist John Hebert and coloristic drummer Ches Smith, she taps a surprising range of ideas and moods, lyrically but also ironically, turning without warning from dry understatement to unabashed noise, hyper-folksiness to intellectualism, plain-spokenness to interesting abstraction, with unusual if unshowy chops. Try this MP3 track from Amazon: “Momentary Lapse.”

Toninho Horta is a grandiosely sensitive romantic yet serious guitar star from the scenically dramatic Brazilian state of Mina Geraise (like his former boss Milton Nascimento). To Jobim With Love gives him haut bossa nova repertoire over which to soar with companionable touches from ace jazzers including pianist Dave Kikoski, tenor saxist Bob Mintzer, bassist Gary Peacock and percussionist Manolo Bandrena, plus three vocals by Tom Jobim’s great interpreter Gal Costa. Horta wraps all this in his unabashedly rich pop orchestra arrangements, waxes Benson & Metheny-esque and does more dreamy singing than seems advisable. But if you’d be swept away, he’s got the ticket.

Birelli Lagrene — Overloaded with sampled sounds and similar ear-candy credit/blame to DJ Afro Cut-Nanga, as if to refute finally the Django Reinhardt-inherited tastefulness which has long been gypsy-jazzman Lagrene’s most commercial suit — Electric Side is over-the-top virtuosic jazz-rock-fusion. The guitarist may have more inherent skill than he knows how to harness — most of the arrangements are credited to multiple members of his band — but in fusion, as Joe Zawinul may have stipulated, more is more. Check out the ridiculous version of Herbie Hancock’s “Jackrabbit.”

Greedy for more new efforts on the guitar front?

Rez Abassi contributes subtle timbral effects, among other techniques, to alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa’s unique Kinsmen with Indian alto sax virtuoso Kadri Gopalnath, and to multi-saxophophonist/composer Dave Pietro’s The Chakra Suite, which elegantly draws on traditional Indian, Brazilian and jazz elements. Abassi also has several albums of his own; I wrote liner notes to Bazaar.

Elvin Bishop — The Blues Rolls On offers upbeat boogies from the rough-voiced mop-top Oklahoman who twined guitar leads with the great Mike Bloomfield in Paul Butterfield’s Blues Band eons ago. Still resembling Harpo Marx, Bishop gathers as guests B.B. King, George Thorogood, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, Angela Strehli, James Cotton, et al., resulting in a stone-blues album more varied in voices, songs, humor and nuance than might be expected, including the irrefutable advice, “Keep A Dollar In Your Pocket (a dollar is your very best friend).”

Bruce Eisenbeil in trio w/ Tom Blancarte (bass) and Andrew Drury (drum set) as Totem, on Solar Forge — play with fire at the edge of musical comprehension and cohesion.

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Cool post thanks! We think your articles are great and hope more soon. We love anything to do with word games/word play.

Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

About Jazz Beyond Jazz

What if there's more to jazz than you suppose? What if jazz demolishes suppositions and breaks all bounds? What if jazz - and the jazz beyond, behind, under and around jazz - could enrich your life?
What if jazz is the subtle, insightful, stylish, … [Read More...]

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Interviews & Articles

Reviewing a sleeping giant, ESP Disks before its early '00s revival
Howard Mandel c 1997, published in issue 157, The Wire
It was a time before psychedelics. Following the seismic cultural disruptions of the mid '50s, rock 'n' roll had hit a … [Read More...]

Howard Mandel c 1998/published by DownBeat, July 1998, under headline Beneath the Underdog (the editor's reference to Charles Mingus's autobiography):
There's an anchor for New York's downtown free jazz and improv "wild bunch": his name is William … [Read More...]

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This is a complete version of the feature on pianist Matthew Shipp I wrote for The Wire, published in February, 1998
Is this the face of New York's jazz avant now? Pianist Matt … [Read More...]

Miles Davis
intended On The Corner to be a
personal statement, an esthetic breakthrough and a social provocation upon its
release in fall of 1972. He could hardly have been more successful: the album
was all that, though it has taken decades for its … [Read More...]